Google Now for Your Body

Google clearly knows what time it is. Today it announced Android Wear, a project to bring Android to wearable computers. The company is starting with smartwatches and rolled out a slick demo video showing how notifications and speaking commands will work. If Google Glass is Google Now for your face, this is pretty much Google Now for the rest of your body.

The preview shows watch-users getting Google Now-style notifications automatically delivered (there’s a jellyfish warning at this beach, here’s another one closeby!) based on cues like location and prior activity. You’ll be able to ask questions in natural language, prefaced by “OK Google,” and get a reply. For that to work well, we’d expect that the watches need to always be listening for the OK Google prompt, Moto X style. It’s also going to be able to control other devices, you can sling a movie to your TV, or fire a playlist on your phone. It’s going to work with health apps to do things like notify you to move when you’ve been too inactive, or track how far and fast you’ve run. And clearly, it’s going to enable all kinds of new actions just as smartphones themselves did.


What Google is actively rolling out today is a developer preview that’s going to let application makers plug into this capability. Your apps will be able to do some of the same kinds of things Google Now can to send you a notification without being asked, or complete a request that you’ve spoken.

Google Now is already the killer feature of Glass. It’s incredibly well-suited to wearables. It makes far more sense to fire notifications to a wearable than a phone, because you can’t always glance at a hand-held screen. You may be driving, for example, or have it tucked away in a bag. As we’ve noted before, wearables are barreling towards us and it won’t be long before you’re going to be wearing the future all over yourself. And that future looks a lot like Google Now.

Via Wired Magazine.